6 minute read
Improving the safety of parks for women and girls
Extract from the introduction to the Safer Parks guidelines. © The Safer Parks Consortium
In Britain, women are three times more likely than men to feel unsafe in a park during the day. After dark, as many as four out of five women in Britain say that they would feel unsafe walking alone in a park, compared to two out of five men.
Practical guidelines that will help to make parks and green spaces safer for women and girls across the UK have been launched by the Safer Parks Consortium, which comprises Keep Britain Tidy, West Yorkshire Combined Authority, Make Space for Girls, and the University of Leeds.
Research supported by the Mayor of West Yorkshire Tracy Brabin and carried out by the University of Leeds has concluded that feeling vulnerable in parks is a barrier that needs to be urgently addressed to ensure that women and girls feel able to use, enjoy and benefit from them. The research was conducted with a diverse sample of over 100 women and girls and found that most believed their local parks to be unsafe.
Informed by the research findings the new guidance, called Safer Parks – Improving Access for Women and Girls, aims to address this barrier with a range of design principles and practical measures, including creating openness and visibility, escape routes, better lighting and the positive presence of park staff and members of the community.
Dr Anna Barker, Associate Professor in Criminal Justice & Criminology, University of Leeds, who led the original research and helped to draw up the guidelines, said: ‘In Britain, women are three times more likely than men to feel unsafe in a park during the day. After dark, as many as four out of five women in Britain say that they would feel unsafe walking alone in a park, compared to two out of five men. Our guidelines, covering ten principles for design and management, can enable decision-makers to enact change.’
The guidance includes a range of suggestions:
Organising regular activities and events to extend women’s use of parks, including after dark
Making sure that the surrounding area and approach routes to parks all feel safe, minimising enclosed and hidden entrances
Creating a sense of belonging through spaces and facilities which give diverse groups of women and girls the sense that they are welcome
Designing the placement of facilities, paths and features so that they encourage use by women, maximise visibility, and are easy to navigate
Involving women and girls in the design of parks
The guidance was launched as part of a two-day conference entitled Women and Girls’ Safety in Parks: Lessons from Research and Practice. At the conference, West Yorkshire Mayor, Tracy Brabin, who supported the development of the guidance, said: ‘We want West Yorkshire to be the safest place to be a woman or a girl. This guidance will help make our parks and wonderful green spaces safer for them.’
The organisations behind the new guidelines hope decisionmakers will now review all of their parks in partnership with the police, and engage with women and girls specifically on safety, ensuring that those who do not currently use the parks are included. They are also calling for the new guidance and the results of their discussions with women and girls to be incorporated into management plans for parks and green spaces.
The guidance is primarily aimed at parks managers, landscape architects and other public sector design professionals across the UK, and helps stakeholders understand gender sensitive principles of safety and implement changes at varying scales and budgets.
The principles cover ten core areas under three themes:
Eyes on the Park – reflects that the presence of others makes women and girls feel safer
Awareness – addresses design issues that can help women and girls feel more secure
Inclusion – considers the importance of bringing a diverse cross-section of women and girls into our parks and designing spaces with their input.
Sue Morgan, former CEO at the Landscape Institute, chaired the closing session of the conference and said, ‘When I started my career in the greenspace sector, I was one of the last apprentice gardeners with the GLC. I was the only woman amongst 30 men working in a park in south east London – with pictures of page three girls on the walls and no PPE that fitted me and no women’s toilets. Fast forward to 2023 and I’d like to think that things have got better for women – but at a recent Access all Areas EDI initiative conference spearheaded by BALI, I learned that PPE for female contractors and access to loos is still an issue. We have also sadly witnessed a continuation of violence to women and girls in the public realm and parks.’
Sue Morgan had a number of reflections at the close of the conference. She said, ‘There needs to be sustainable investment in parks. There is a need to build new spaces as well as curating existing places and we need to design well for play and to consider gender. Designers, planners, local authority officers, politicians, NGOs, statutory services all need education and recognition that there is a crisis in women’s safety.’
Morgan suggested there needed to be a paradigm shift in the sector that reflected diversity and took a zero tolerance position regarding safety and misconduct. She also took the view that better reporting was a key factor in getting antisocial behaviour and damaged infrastructure taken more seriously. She stated, ‘Good design can’t change the worst of behaviours, but it makes a difference as it attracts people to a place … it helps make a place safe.’ She concluded by noting that Design Economy Research revealed that 78% of all designers in the UK are men. Furthermore she highlighted that, in a recent LI skills sector survey of all green space professionals at LI, it was found that 73% of the green space workforce were over 40 and 93% were white. In addition, 11% of women in the green space sector occupy senior roles and achieve over £60k.
Dr Anna Barker is keen for landscape architects, managers and planners to make use of her research and the new guidelines; to provide feedback; and to build the body of knowledge that will help embed the research outcomes in day-to-day practices.
She explained, ‘It’s a first step really because there are enough good practice examples. We hope that in the next five years, there will be lots of brilliant case studies.’
Barker wants to build on the momentum generated by both the launch of the guidelines and the conference in Leeds. Landscape practitioners are invited to help implement the guidance, develop case studies, and increase expertise in this area.
Paul Lincoln is editor of Landscape.
